NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

New, harsher rules apply when you try and qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid is a poverty program so you can only have very limited assets and income to qualify. Some of the new rules are:

Previously people gave away assets in order to meet the Medicaid requirements. Medicaid now looks back at 5 years of records (instead of 3 years) from when you apply to see what gifts you made. Any gifts mean you are ineligible for Medicaid for a period of time.

The time period of ineligibility now begins when you are out of money, instead of beginning when you made the gift. All gifts count, such as helping grandchildren with tuition or buying a computer, even if not made with any intention of qualifying for Medicaid.

Lately I have had the misfortune to make too many Shiva calls and attend too many wakes. Recently a friend told me what a comfort it was and how much easier it had been on the whole family because her mother had a Living Will. She said it was such a relief not to have to make the decisions whether to give her mother resuscitation and feeding because her mother had made those decisions for herself in her Living Will. They had the confidence and security of knowing for certain that the medical decisions were what their mother had wanted because she had a properly drawn Living Will stating her wishes. It is hard to describe what a relief this was to the family, but it clearly made a huge difference to them in accepting their mother's death.